Bitcoin?
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There's a calculator somewhere that tells you how much time it takes in average to mine bitcoins. Core 2 Duo PC's would take 10 years each in average to mine 50 - so if you have, say, an i7 you should take much less time, but still some years, and given the amount of business accepting it, I wouldn't recommend trying to make a living out of it.
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[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]There's a calculator somewhere that tells you how much time it takes in average to mine bitcoins. Core 2 Duo PC's would take 10 years each in average to mine 50[/quote]
I'm going to flog this horse again, even though it might be dead... but does anybody in this thread know exactly why bitcoins take so much CPU power to "mine"? I still don't get that at all. A bitcoin is just a fixed-point number sitting in a particular account, right? ...how does creating a number take so much time?
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@blakeyrat said:
[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]There's a calculator somewhere that tells you how much time it takes in average to mine bitcoins. Core 2 Duo PC's would take 10 years each in average to mine 50
I'm going to flog this horse again, even though it might be dead... but does anybody in this thread know exactly why bitcoins take so much CPU power to "mine"? I still don't get that at all. A bitcoin is just a fixed-point number sitting in a particular account, right? ...how does creating a number take so much time?[/quote]
The point is the way bitcoin tracks your money. You have wallets that hold pairs of asymetric cryptography keys. In order for someone to send you a bitcoin, they need your public key. The "money" is transfered when the sender broadcasts to the network that he's sending some amount to your public key, but the transaction stays on hold for a while.
At any given time, the whole of the network is working through building blocks. Each block contains all the most recent transactions of the network in an encrypted format. So there's no way for someone to know what's in a block until you decrypt it via brute-force. Once you decrypt a block, you broadcast its key to the network - and if it's validated, then all the transactions in it are fulfilled, you get 50 bitcoins for your trouble, and the network starts working on a new block.
This also means that you can't create bitcoins out of thin
airinternet nether, since the transaction that adds fake bitcoins to any of your public keys wouldn't be contained in a valid block.Money can be lost, however. There's a file that holds both your private keys and the amount of bitcoins in them. If you lose this file, that money ceases existing. If you steal it from someone and also have their public keys, then you have all of the bitcoins associated with those keys.
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[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]The point is the way bitcoin tracks your money. You have wallets that hold pairs of asymetric cryptography keys. In order for someone to send you a bitcoin, they need your public key. The "money" is transfered when the sender broadcasts to the network that he's sending some amount to your public key, but the transaction stays on hold for a while.[/quote]
This I get, but note that in this scenario a bitcoin is (broken record) a fixed-point number and nothing more.
[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]At any given time, the whole of the network is working through building blocks. Each block contains all the most recent transactions of the network in an encrypted format. So there's no way for someone to know what's in a block until you decrypt it via brute-force. Once you decrypt a block, you broadcast its key to the network - and if it's validated, then all the transactions in it are fulfilled, you get 50 bitcoins for your trouble, and the network starts working on a new block.[/quote]
Ok, does this paragraph relate to the last one?
Are you saying that when Bitcoin was founded, someone used tons of machines to encrypt millions of bitcoins, and all people are doing is force-decrypting them? So when they created this database initially, they created a bunch of "anonymous" 50 bitcoin transactions, and if you manage to decrypt their public key you can transfer them to your own account, am I understanding that correctly?
... and if so, why? Why not just, as we've proposed in this thread, hand them out to registered accounts at a pre-determined rate and save everybody time, effort, and wattage?
[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]This also means that you can't create bitcoins out of thin
airinternet nether, since the transaction that adds fake bitcoins to any of your public keys wouldn't be contained in a valid block.[/quote]What does "contained in a valid block" mean? Block of what?
I thought what really prevented this is that the system kept a transaction history for every account, and figured out your total number of bitcoins by traversing the transaction history. Without the proper keys, you have no way of entering a new transaction into that log, and therefore can't "generate" money from thin air.
Maybe I'm just a retard, but I'm still not getting this at all. Your explanation isn't any clearer to me than the crap on their Wiki. Thanks for trying I guess.
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@blakeyrat said:
What does "contained in a valid block" mean? Block of what?
A block of .... you know .....stuff. Don't you know anything?@blakeyrat said:
Your explanation isn't any clearer to me than the crap on their Wiki.
That fact that nobody can explain exactly how Bitcoin works, simply and clearly, makes me suspicious. It appears to involve a lot of encrypting and decrypting, so that would explain high CPU usage, but there is no clear explanation of what you're doing, or more importantly, why. @blakeyrat said:Why not just, as we've proposed in this thread, hand them out to registered accounts at a pre-determined rate and save everybody time, effort, and wattage?
Exactly. It really seems like a pointless exercise in wasting time and electrickery.
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@blakeyrat said:
I [i]am[/i] a retard, and I'm not getting this at all. So you're probably alright. Or something like that.Maybe I'm just a retard, but I'm still not getting this at all. Your explanation isn't any clearer to me than the crap on their Wiki. Thanks for trying I guess.
Seriously, though - I've seen more concise, logical explanations of how the god damned real-world banking system works than bitcoin.
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Let us use a botnet to mine every Bitcoin possible in a matter of days and then lock them away where they can't be used
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@blakeyrat said:
Are you saying that when Bitcoin was founded, someone used tons of machines to encrypt millions of bitcoins, and all people are doing is force-decrypting them? So when they created this database initially, they created a bunch of "anonymous" 50 bitcoin transactions, and if you manage to decrypt their public key you can transfer them to your own account, am I understanding that correctly?
... and if so, why? Why not just, as we've proposed in this thread, hand them out to registered accounts at a pre-determined rate and save everybody time, effort, and wattage?
The strength of the cryptography employed is variable, so when it all began, it took much less effort to solve a block. As the amount of wallets and transactions increases, they also scale the cryptography strength up. The first bitcoins were minted by block solving, even though there were no transactions at all (which just made the blocks easier to solve).
And what you thought about keeping transaction history is right. These blocks I keep talking about are the repositories of the transactions made in the system. In order to traverse an account's history, you need to get all the blocks ever crafted which contained transactions for it.
If you take some more time to read about it, you might understand it better - but the more I understand, the more I think it's another very good idea that will end up screwing a lot of people at some point, either due to losing relevance in the long term, or by bursting like a bubble the day someone finds an exploit.
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[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]The strength of the cryptography employed is variable, so when it all began, it took much less effort to solve a block. As the amount of wallets and transactions increases, they also scale the cryptography strength up. The first bitcoins were minted by block solving, even though there were no transactions at all (which just made the blocks easier to solve).[/quote]
Well, that's great, but it still doesn't explain why cryptography is involved at all in the process of creating new bitcoins, which I think is the sticking point we're all having.
[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]If you take some more time to read about it, you might understand it better[/quote]
Read about it where? Do you know of better documentation than their wiki?
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It seems to me that if the process were anything less than absolutely fucking impossible, hyperinflation would result.
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@blakeyrat said:
[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]The strength of the cryptography employed is variable, so when it all began, it took much less effort to solve a block. As the amount of wallets and transactions increases, they also scale the cryptography strength up. The first bitcoins were minted by block solving, even though there were no transactions at all (which just made the blocks easier to solve).
Well, that's great, but it still doesn't explain why cryptography is involved at all in the process of creating new bitcoins, which I think is the sticking point we're all having.
[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]If you take some more time to read about it, you might understand it better[/quote]
Read about it where? Do you know of better documentation than their wiki?[/quote]
You can read more about coin creation in the paper that started it all.
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[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]You can read more about coin creation in the paper that started it all.[/quote]
I can, but what I'd find is this:
@Some Japanese bitcoin creator said:
By convention, the first transaction in a block is a special transaction that starts a new coin owned
by the creator of the block. This adds an incentive for nodes to support the network, and provides
a way to initially distribute coins into circulation, since there is no central authority to issue them.
The steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending
resources to add gold to circulation. In our case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended.Which is not helpful.
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[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]You can read more about coin creation in the paper that started it all.[/quote] i did, and I still don't know any more than I did before.
"Each node works on finding a difficult proof-of-work for its block." is not an explanation.
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At this point, I feel justified in believing that Bitcoin works on the basis of everyone believing that someone way more intelligent than them made sure it would work right.
Those of us who refuse to automatically assume that the creators were more intelligent than we are don't fall for the illusion and question why the hell the whole thing is even supposed to work.
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I think asking "how does bitcoin work" is sort of a moot question, since- well, it doesn't. I mean, sure, it works to give you a number to increment by wasting CPU time and electricity, but really I can do the exact same thing in Fallout 3, and that has the advantage of actually being fun. If I'm going to use my CPU or GPU for something during otherwise idle time, It's going to be something like Folding@Home or something, which may have it's own share of WTFs but at least I know that it's actually trying to do something useful. Additionally, it's important to note, that you can't really do shit with bitcoins, you just use them in transactions with other bitcoin users. You can't go to a supermarket and buy groceries with bitcoins. you can't buy gasoline with bitcoins. Best you can hope for is to trick some poor sap into using REAL money to buy your bitcoins. Then they're fucked because they can't do anything until they somehow turn the bitcoins into real money. You just trade them with other people interested in bitcoins. Sounds a hell of a lot like Trading Cards.
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@BC_Programmer said:
I think asking "how does bitcoin work" is sort of a moot question,
In addition to the points you bring up (and in handy outline form):
1) The design of Bitcoin makes it utterly useless for real-world transactions:
a) Transfers may take several hours to appear on both users' screen.
b) Making a transfer requires the device has the full database of all transactions. This is already 800 MB, which is a huge load for a mobile device, but imagine how large it would be if Bitcoin were actually popular.2) The design of Bitcoin makes it useless for the purpose of anonymous money transfers
a) Each user needs to maintain their own account to track transactions, meaning each account points to an individual user. (Admittedly, the account doesn't include any PII. But it's still not very anonymous.)
b) The community recommends running Bitcoin through Tor to actually make it anonymous. Tor, being a network used solely to shuffle child porn around, isn't something any sane person would be willing to install on their own machine.3) It's only a matter of time before drug and child porn dealers catch on to it, and it'll inevitably be made illegal.
The whole reason I was interested is I thought you might be able to make a few quick bucks and then get out of the market before point 3 happens, but at this point I don't think there's any legit way of converting bitcoins back into cash money. (Other than maybe Craigslist, if Bitcoin users read that.) BTW, the current appearances of Bitcoin in the tech press are probably someone else trying to do what I was planning to do, heh. I hope they find a way to cash out before it all becomes moot.
So yeah. In summary: probably a dumb idea, definitely a more-than-useless implementation.
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@Spectre said:
@blakeyrat said:
Tor, being a network used solely to shuffle child porn around
Citation needed.
Ok, not "solely" but "primarily."
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@blakeyrat said:
@Spectre said:
Citation still needed.@blakeyrat said:
Tor, being a network used solely to shuffle child porn around
Citation needed.
Ok, not "solely" but "primarily."
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@PJH said:
@blakeyrat said:
@Spectre said:
Citation still needed.@blakeyrat said:
Tor, being a network used solely to shuffle child porn around
Citation needed.
Ok, not "solely" but "primarily."
While searching for a citation using this extremely clever search string, I also came across this article: The Bitcoin Conspiracy Theory. Which posits that Bitcoin is created by the NSA as a way of identifying "subversives." It also contains this hilarious understatement:
@some crazy conspiracy nut said:
Fewer than 1% of the population is running a Bicoin client.
One of the comments links to this forum thread, on a forum populated by people... slightly less rational than the people on this forum. I particularly enjoyed how the user Dionysus refers to the Government as "psychopaths."
It looks like their publicity campaign is working, at least among the paranoid nutcases.
So, anyway, in conclusion, Tor is used primarily for child porn.
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@blakeyrat said:
So, anyway, in conclusion, Tor is used primarily for child porn.
I did a bit of googling to back up my suspicions, and from what I've seen you're overstating things slightly. Tor may well be used for many illegal activities - credit-card fraud, Nigerian scamming, drug deals (perhaps) and so-on - that are not kiddy porn (of which there is undoubtedly a lot.What did become evident, and makes the whole thing make much more sense, is that Bitcoins are a currency based on, and used for trading, child-porn. As far as I can see, that's the missing link which explains why anyone might buy a bitcoin - because you can then exchange it for child porn.
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@blakeyrat said:
While searching for a citation using this extremely clever search string,
Clever but not very informative. This thread was the number 2 search result.
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@El_Heffe said:
It was fourth last time I checked. And now first...@blakeyrat said:
While searching for a citation using this extremely clever search string,
Clever but not very informative. This thread was the number 2 search result.Anyway, on the second page there's a result about a (now defunct) kiddy-porn site called TorPedo - yes, they really were that blatant.
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It's being used for narcotics trade? Duuuh.
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Sorry, I know nobody cares about bitcoin anymore, but this article at SomethingAwful is hilarious. One of their forum members caused a panic sell by posting in the bitcoin forums, and got this reaction (I hope these images show; they're hotlinked):
Here's the experience of a bitcoin miner:
@SomethingAwful said:
To be clear, Something Awful never attacked Bitcoins. We never encouraged any of our users to mess with the Bitcoin markets. This all transpired because there is a thread on our forums, started by a feckless BTC proponent, in which our users discuss how unstable BTC is as a currency, how it is a market bubble created by speculation on a worthless commodity, how nobody will accept it other than a bunch of web hosts and web designers, and posts from BTC proponents on the Bitcoin central forums.
In other words, Bitcoins did all this to itself. We never orchestrated or encouraged any attack and I'm sorry a bunch of people lost a bunch of fake money.
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Honestly, it seems like barely anyone in this thread even tried to understand it. A poor effort. Here's a pro-tip: don't declare something a WTF until you understand it. Otherwise, you just advertise your ignorance.
Bitcoin is a logical solution for the given requirements (the WTF comes only from the fact that it's a solution looking for a problem). Here's another pro-tip: if you try to understand it, focus less on the mining and more on how you verify transactions (the mining is just there as an incentive, to try and have more computing power in legit users than attackers).
In other news, Bitcoin is somehow still alive.
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@silenceisdefeat said:
Honestly, it seems like barely anyone in this thread even tried to understand it. A poor effort. Here's a pro-tip: don't declare something a WTF until you understand it. Otherwise, you just advertise your ignorance.
The fun thing is that necro'ing this thread brought it to my attention. Lots of the discussion here went to:
- This is retarded
- I don't understand how BTC works
- Tor is PedoNet
None of these are even reasons to dismiss the Bitcoin thingy. The workings of BitCoins are based on something called "crypto-anarchy", which is the use of cryptography to aid on anarchist ideas (stay away from Big Brother, whatever). Tor is also a product of crypto anarchist ideals. The reason Bitcoins are hard to mint is because its ... asymmetric crypto, mixed in with P2P networking and other stuff. Hell, I specialize in PKI and crypto and I still don't fully get how the whole thing works.
Bitcoins can actually be traded for real currency, there are a couple of sites that do exactly that. However, the "to cash/from cash" transactions are done by weird not-quite-PayPal entities, so you're bound to end up being scammed at some point. And a lot of 'em are US-only, or EU-only, so good luck having the ability to cash in/out if you're outside those regions.
And lastly ... firing up Tor doesn't necessarily turn your PC into a Tor relay. The default mode is "client only", no incoming connections. In fact, it is pretty likely it wouldn't even work as a relay even if you wanted to, thanks to NAT fucking up the internet (which is incidentally the same reason why Bitcoin won't work at blakeyrat's work PC). Just block incoming connections at your firewall for the Tor ports, and voila!
Of course, both Tor and Bitcoins attract the wrong kind of people. Untraceable money? Untraceable connections? Criminals will want to have this. Hell, you'll find Tor stores allegedly selling pot! Though the funny money is only worth as long as it can be cashed out for real money. Once that goes, you might as well trade BTCs for Bottle Caps!
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WalloftextWalloftextWalloftext...?
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@El_Heffe said:
The Wiki says that you can generate (on average) 50 Bitcoins in a year (just over a week per coin). Unless the value of that Bitcoin is <font face="courier new,courier">significantly</font> greater than the cost of the electricy used to create that coin, then there's really no point in all of this. You're just wasting energy.
So I'm going to necro this thread and point out that if you had mined 50 bitcoins 1 year ago, today they would be worth ~$30,000 US (which is significantly greater than the cost of the electricity used to create those coins). And that's where the value is.
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@blakeyrat said:
[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]There's a calculator somewhere that tells you how much time it takes in average to mine bitcoins. Core 2 Duo PC's would take 10 years each in average to mine 50
I'm going to flog this horse again, even though it might be dead... but does anybody in this thread know exactly why bitcoins take so much CPU power to "mine"? I still don't get that at all. A bitcoin is just a fixed-point number sitting in a particular account, right? ...how does creating a number take so much time?[/quote]
If I understand correctly (and I'm not 100% sure that I do), when you're mining bitcoins you're really ensuring that a given transaction is valid - that this person's wallet ID is valid, that the target id is valid, that there are sufficient funds, etc, etc, etc. HOWEVER, bitcoin transaction are processed in batches, so you actually have to process 50 transactions (or whatever, I'm not sure what the actual number is).
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@mikeTheLiar said:
@blakeyrat said:
[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]There's a calculator somewhere that tells you how much time it takes in average to mine bitcoins. Core 2 Duo PC's would take 10 years each in average to mine 50
I'm going to flog this horse again, even though it might be dead... but does anybody in this thread know exactly why bitcoins take so much CPU power to "mine"? I still don't get that at all. A bitcoin is just a fixed-point number sitting in a particular account, right? ...how does creating a number take so much time?
If I understand correctly (and I'm not 100% sure that I do), when you're mining bitcoins you're really ensuring that a given transaction is valid - that this person's wallet ID is valid, that the target id is valid, that there are sufficient funds, etc, etc, etc. HOWEVER, bitcoin transaction are processed in batches, so you actually have to process 50 transactions (or whatever, I'm not sure what the actual number is).[/quote]
You're trying to find a unique number with a specific hash. This gets harder and harder to do with time as more are found.
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@blakeyrat said:
Has anybody looked into Bitcoin? Am I missing an opportunity for major money making, or is it just a scam?
I downloaded the client from the website, but it... well it doesn't do much to explain how to use it, and it's just sitting here with "0 connections." I assume it's supposed to at some point connect to stuff, yes?
No it is not a scam. It is sacred currency for most people. There are real shops in Germany, who accept bitcoin.
Unfortunately, it is a very time consuming process to generate even 1 bit coin. If you run your machine for two years, you'll have grand total of 8 - 10 bit coins to show for it.
Do you really want to get into that?Good luck.
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Well, since this thread is near the top, let's see if I can answer an old question.
@blakeyrat said:
[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]There's a calculator somewhere that tells you how much time it takes in average to mine bitcoins. Core 2 Duo PC's would take 10 years each in average to mine 50
I'm going to flog this horse again, even though it might be dead... but does anybody in this thread know exactly why bitcoins take so much CPU power to "mine"? I still don't get that at all. A bitcoin is just a fixed-point number sitting in a particular account, right? ...how does creating a number take so much time?[/quote]
This is called "proof of work", and it basically means whoever can contribute more hashing power to the network gets the new bitcoins. This of course creates an arms race between all participants. From what I understand, there are two reasons for this:
- It makes it practically impossible for an attacker to steal coins by brute-forcing things, since they'd need more power than the rest of the network, which is a lot. Plus, actually attacking the network would destroy the real value of all bitcoins, so they're better off just getting their coins legitimately.
- It gives a way to distribute the new bitcoins "evenly" (sort of) between people. Without a central institution or a reliable way to tell people apart (to avoid someone using thousands of proxies) there is no other good way to do it.
There is also Peercoin, which uses proof-of-stake instead. In short, whoever has more money also gets more money and gets more "voting power" (I dunno what that means exactly, haven't read the specification). The idea is that if you have a lot of coins you'll also be interested in maintaining the stability of the network. But it came years after bitcoin (in fact, after this thread was made) and it's though to overtake the leader.
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"Money is a matter of functions four, a medium, a measure, a standard, a store."
i don't think bitcoin qualify entirely to be treated as money.
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More and more people are disappearing.
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@blakeyrat said:
I'd just-as-likely need to then spend that bitcoin paying for my power bill-- it takes, what, a couple weeks for a single computer to mine a bitcoin? And a bitcoin's worth a little more than a dollar? So am I even breaking even here?
How'd that work out for you?
Hindsight hindsight derka-derka-derk.
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@jmap said:
@blakeyrat said:
A year ago, the price of bitocin was low enough that they were worth less that the cost of the electricity needed to mine them. Now, bitcoins are worth a lot more, on paper, but good luck actually turning them into real money.I'd just-as-likely need to then spend that bitcoin paying for my power bill-- it takes, what, a couple weeks for a single computer to mine a bitcoin? And a bitcoin's worth a little more than a dollar? So am I even breaking even here?
How'd that work out for you?
Hindsight hindsight derka-derka-derk.
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@El_Heffe said:
good luck actually turning them into real money
Fair point.
But then who needs money when you can turn them into cookies?
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I actually have one or two bitcoins in a wallet somewhere, but I didn't bother to back up the wallet code number and now it's lost forever into the mists of time. So it goes.
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@El_Heffe said:
@jmap said:
@blakeyrat said:
A year ago, the price of bitocin was low enough that they were worth less that the cost of the electricity needed to mine them. Now, bitcoins are worth a lot more, on paper, but good luck actually turning them into real money.I'd just-as-likely need to then spend that bitcoin paying for my power bill-- it takes, what, a couple weeks for a single computer to mine a bitcoin? And a bitcoin's worth a little more than a dollar? So am I even breaking even here?
How'd that work out for you?
Hindsight hindsight derka-derka-derk.
If you had timed it right, it was definitely possible to make a shitload of money through BTC over the last year and a half. Of course, it was definitely possible to lose a shitload of money and end up going ass to ass with a purple dildo in front of a room full of skeevy businessmen as well. Or diving out of your high-rise apartment/headquarters and eating pavement at a high velocity.
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@blakeyrat said:
So it goes.
+1 Vonnegut reference
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@joe.edwards said:
@blakeyrat said:
So it goes.
+1 Vonnegut reference
-1 nothing's dead. Except for that one Bitcoin exchange CEO.
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@mikeTheLiar said:
@joe.edwards said:
@blakeyrat said:
So it goes.
+1 Vonnegut reference
-1 nothing's dead. Except for that one Bitcoin exchange CEO.Hey that Amanda lady is also dead.
